As for the Crown Colonies and India, the Dominions must share our
burden. It is objected, both here and in India, that life in the
Dominions is a very inadequate education for the sympathetic handling of
alien races and customs. So is life in many parts of this island. The
fact is that the process of learning to govern these alien peoples is
the best education in the world. The Indian Civil Service is a great
College, and it governs India. I can speak to this point, for I have
lived there and seen it at work. If India were really governed by the
ideas of the young novices who go out there fresh from their
examinations, she would be a distressful country. But the novice is
taken in hand at once by the older members of the service; he works
under the eye of the Collector and the Assistant Collector; they
shoulder him and instruct him as tame elephants shoulder and instruct
the wild; they are kind to him, and he lives in their company while his
prejudices and follies peel off him; so that within a few years he
becomes a tolerant, wise, and devoted civil servant, who speaks the
language of the College and is proud to belong to it. The success of the
Government of India is not to be credited to the classes from which the
Civil Service is recruited, but to the discipline of the Service itself,
a Service so high in tradition and so free from corruption that
advancement in it is to be gained only by intelligence and sympathy.
What I am saying is that I can imagine no finer raw material for the
political discipline of the Indian Civil Service than some of the
generous and clean-run spirits who have come from the Dominions to help
in this war. They could be introduced to a share of our responsibilities
without impeding or retarding the movement to give to selected natives
of India a larger share in the government of their country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account